Melissa Lambarena is a lead writer on the credit cards team at NerdWallet. She has enthusiastically covered credit card-related topics for over six years. Her prior experience includes nine years as a content creator for several publications and websites. Through her work, she aims to help readers extract value from credit cards to meet financial goals like stretching their budget, building credit, traveling to dream destinations and paying off debt. She explores these topics and others in NerdWallet's monthly credit card tips column and the Millennial Money column featured in The Associated Press. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, USA Today and Yahoo Finance, among others. Melissa has a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles.